Friday, February 18, 2011

That's a piece of artwork associated with a rather obscure bit of D&D-related merchandise from the early 1980s, about which I'll probably talk more in the days to come. As I recall, this piece, along with several others by the same illustrator, were sold as posters through one of the catalog stores (Sears?). Does anyone else remember this?

25 comments:

If my memory serves me correctly, this (and others) were on various school supplies. I had several pocket folders with this on them. I convinced my parents to buy me several during one of our late summer shopping for school trips. Ironically, I thought they were SO cool that I ended up just keeping them for the art and never used them for either school or gaming.

Yup, it's from the St. Regis Dungeons & Dragons/Advanced Dungeons & Dragons portfolio line. I still use one of those folders, very beaten up, torn, and taped together, to hold my old characters. The folders (and three-ring binders) still show up occasionally on eBay.

Never knew that they released them as posters, though! Would love to find one of those!

Alex Nuckols is the artist. He illustrated most of the 1981-82 line of AD&D-licensed St. Regis products (folder, notebooks, quadrille graph paper). Beautiful artwork - they should've used him for some actual D&D products.

Tome of Treasures has a forum showing cover scans for many of these: http://tomeoftreasures.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2063

The first one in the forum is a binder with the pic you posted, titled "Goblin Ambush". I don't specifically remember this picture, but I do remember kids in my elementary school with folders/notebooks with some of the others. I may have even had one myself (?).

Wow, I don't think I ever saw ANY of the stationary products mentioned. '80-'81 was my first year of university, and a time when I was paying weekly visits to any/all of three dedicated gaming stores near the campus. I would definitely have snapped these up if any of the stores had carried them: D&D meets school supplies - that would have been a no-brainer.

Wow, okay, a little further research reveals that Alex Nuckols, the artist, was from right here in my hometown of Birmingham, AL. Add that the the fact that Allen Hammack is from this neck of the woods, and it makes me feel a little better about this little corner of the world.

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